Like many of you, I've been watching the big changes in user interfaces over the past few years, trying to make sense of them all. Is there a common explanation for the controversies surrounding the Windows 8 UI and Unity? Where do GNOME 3, KDE, Cinnamon, and MATE fit in? This article offers one view.

I agree. Many of the open source developers were seized by the idea that "We have to re-invent the way people interact with computers!" It wasn't just about handhelds. KDE comes to my mind first when I think of it this way. Too bad they didn't extensively user-test many of their new ideas. (Although I suppose you could say that KDE 4.0 and 4.1 were the "user test".)

I may be blind by what I think is an awesome design, but I don't see exactly why kde 4 was a radical departure into the UI design wilderness. If anything I think it was a radical design to empower a user to figure out how best to make a UI work for them.